Matthew Henry on Ezekiel 4:9–end
The best exposition of this part of Ezekiel's prediction of Jerusalem's desolation is Jeremiah's lamentation of it, Lam 4:3, Lam 4:4, etc., and Lam 4:10, where he pathetically describes the terrible famine that was in Jerusalem during the siege and the sad effects of it.
I. The prophet here, to affect the people with the foresight of it, must confine himself for 390 days to coarse fare and short commons, and that ill-dressed, for they should want both food and fuel.
1. His meat, for the quality of it, was to be of the worst bread, made of but little wheat and barley, and the rest of beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, such as we feed horses or fatted hogs with, and this mixed, as m…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Ezekiel 4:14
Ezekiel, as a priest, had been accustomed to the strictest abstinence from everything legally impure. Peter felt the same scruple at a similar command (Act 10:14; compare Isa 65:4). Positive precepts, being dependent on a particular command can be set aside at the will of the divine ruler; but moral precepts are everlasting in their obligation because God cannot be inconsistent with His unchanging moral nature.
abominable flesh--literally, "flesh that stank from putridity." Flesh of animals three days killed was prohibited (Lev 7:17-18; Lev 19:6-7).
Adam Clarke on Ezekiel 4:14
My soul hath not been polluted - There is a remarkable similarity between this expostulation of the prophet and that of St. Peter, Act 10:14.
John Gill on Ezekiel 4:14
Then said I, ah, Lord God!.... The interjection "ah" is expressive of sighing and groaning, as Jarchi; or of deprecation, as the Targum, which paraphrases it,
""and I said", receive my prayer, O Lord God:''
behold, my soul hath not been polluted; not meaning that his soul had not been polluted with sin, or with an evil thought, as Kimchi interprets it; but by his soul he means the inward part of his body, his stomach and belly; which had not been defiled by taking in meats which were unclean by the law, as follows:
for from my youth up, even till now, have I not eaten of that which dieth of itself, or is torn in pieces; these were forbidden to be eaten by the law; and such that did were d…
